CHENNAI: Perundurai AIADMK MLA Jayakumar on Thursday urged the State government to change the alignment of a 400 KV tower line project being executed near a known archaeological site at Kavunthampalayam near Kunnathur in Tirupur.

Participating in the debate on demand for grants for Special Programme Implementation and Sports departments in the Assembly, Jayakumar said that the officials of Tangedco are trying to develop a substation for tower line project 50 feet away from the site which houses a 32 feet tall Menhir–one of the largest in the country.

The people of the area are protesting for 683 days against the move, Jayakumar said, and added that the area was rich in artefacts of the archaeological site, which were on display at the Keezhadi museum. Urging the state archaeology and electricity ministers to heed the request of the people, the AIADMK MLA called for realigning the tower line project.

Responding to his request, State Information and Publicity Minister M P Saminathan who hails from Tiruppur assured to look into the issue before alleging that the tower line project was initiated only in the previous AIADMK regime.